


Silk

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: A silk-edged blanket offers a little fluffy comfort.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Kudos: 6





	Silk

They laid side by side by unspoken agreement; even with the stove fed absolutely everything that burned light and quick, their breaths were visible in the air  _ inside the tent _ . This was of special concern in the case of the slender Corporal; Max’s lungs were not strong. Charles could not build some form of internal shelter that would cradle and warm the organs themselves - an absurd and rather gory image that, as a thoracic surgeon, he could scarcely prevent from rising in his mind, but he could lend his warmth to Klinger like a coat or a blanket. 

Speaking of which… “Dear heart, I have seen you engage in meditation, but this ritual is quite new. What purpose does it serve?” 

Klinger didn’t blush, but his sudden stillness communicated that he hadn’t been aware of the lulling action in which he was engaged: running the silken edge of a worn blanket through his fingers over and over and over again as one might do with the tail of a cat. He turned his dark head on the pillow to regard his best friend. “Silky toes.” 

Winchester raised an eyebrow (and even that tiny movement reminded him that his face was cold). 

“ ‘s what my mom used to call it,” Klinger explained. “When I was real little, she’d rub silk between my fingers and toes to help me fall asleep.” 

“And you call me decadent! It sounds as though you were quite the young prince, Max.”

Klinger shoved at him. “Don’t tease, Major. It was real nice. And when I started sewing silk and stuff together, not just for my cousins, but for me, too, it made me brave enough to go to ma and tell her, y’know, who I was.”

Charles envisioned this, a dark head lain on a warm lap in supplication, Klinger’s mouth so full of “I’m sorry,” that it was hard to breathe, his eyes troubled and hurt by this part of himself he couldn’t put aside, hang up in a closet, or shove into a drawer like the garments themselves. 

“I’d read about the garment district in New York,” Klinger said then. “And movies in Hollywood. All those costumes, right? I told her if it wouldn’t be so shameful, I’d find somewhere like that where I could be useful and maybe a little more safe… maybe it’d be a place where people wouldn’t mind so much, y’know?” 

“What did she say, your mother?” 

“Well, she made me some of that tea we had a little bit ago.”

Charles could still taste the evergreen bite of cardamom, the sting of black pepper, the vanilla leavening everything like a sweet salve. 

“And she said, ‘you won’t be happy, Maxie, until you find someone in your own life, not just at a job, who lets you be yourself. Someone besides your adoring mother.’” 

Charles had anticipated a happy ending given Klinger’s comfort level in a stole and hosiery, but genuine affection for this woman whom he had never met flowered through his chest, bursting out in bright tendrils of warmth. “A true lady.” 

“She oughta be, given she raised one,” Maxwell joked. But he knew he was lucky. Radar read everyone’s mail, and he’d told Klinger how poorly the Winchester clan treated their surgeon son. 

“They sent ‘im over here to prove himself!” Radar had confided in an angry whisper. “And they won’t get ‘im  out, even though they got two cousins out and got a buncha nephews 4-F’d.” 

Klinger considered it all quite “F’d” (no 4 required) and had set out to look after the taller, more educated man. Charles had play-fought him on it. In the early, uncertain days of their friendship, he’d gone so far as to try to drive him off with insults. But here they were, as true friends as that sailor and the whale hunter fellow in that book Charles had read to him, and as cozily tangled. 

“She told me something else, Major, if you wanna hear it.” 

“Please, Max.” 

A pretty phrase; he liked the way it hit his ear and chimed. “She told me to find someone who’d run silk between my fingers and toes. Anybody like that, she said, she’d be just fine to keep.” 

Daring in the dark, Charles pressed his lips to the strands of his hair; they were as silky as he had imagined. “I shall be at no loss as to what to get you for Christmas now.” They were, after all, quite close to the silk capital of the world. 

Klinger returned his daring, caught his fingers to kiss warmth back into them. “A ring?” he bargained, laughter adding sparkle to the words that a diamond would have sighed over. 

_ Oh, my dear one. My darling Corporal.  _ “Wrapped in a silk handkerchief, of course.” 

Cuddled closer together now, wearing matched smiles in place of the matched bands that would come in the months ahead, they staved off the winter night with hopes for their shared life (and a little silk). 

End! 


End file.
